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I made some Royal Icing last night and, as with every time in my life that I have made Royal Icing, I’m still nursing the strained muscles in my forearm. I don’t know what it is really called but I always refer to it as ‘telephone arm’ – the pain you get when you have been on hold for twenty five minutes waiting to talk to someone in India with a strong accent that you can’t quite understand. It’s that pain that suddenly comes over you like a wave when you finally put the telephone back down again. But I digress.
What has always amazed me about making Royal Icing – and let’s face it, it’s not exactly difficult to make – is the fact that the instructions are never right. Wherever you get them from they always say put this, this and that in a bowl and beat for five minutes. Sometimes it might say something like, beat vigourously for five minutes. If anyone on this planet has actually managed to make a good icing with five minutes beating, vigourously or not, then I take my hat off to them. It took me an hour of frantic and extreme beating with an electric hand mixer running on the fastest setting, which is the one where it states that if you let go the bloody thing will take off and not land until it reaches the next village.
I assume that Silver Spoon and Tate & Lyle got together years ago and agreed on the 5 minute claim because if they said on the packet that you needed to beat this thing for a day and a half no bugger would buy it.
What I don’t understand is what on earth is actually going on in the bowl. I mean it’s all just atoms right? Isn’t it just a matter of rearranging atoms? You throw them into the bowl in several different states, perform a ’shock and awe’ attack for half an hour and then they are supposed to surrender and all turn into nice Royal Icing atoms. Instead, just as you think you’re getting those little ‘peaks’ you are aiming for, the insurgency starts and the bloody things fight back.
In the end, of course, I won. But it was touch and go there for a while.
> What I don’t understand is what on earth is actually going on in the bowl. I mean it’s all just atoms right? Isn’t it just a matter of rearranging atoms?
Please don’t ever try and make bread.
Hey… I’ve made bread! Once or twice I’ve even made good bread.
Andy, dearie….don’t know if they have this across The Pond, but here in the States they’ve got icing in a carton. Pop the top, it’s spreadable, gooey, sugary and bloody easy, mate!!!!!
LOL
Jansy. Shame on you!
This is ‘Royal Icing’! The ‘real’ thing. You have to leave the cake for at least a week for it to dry out and become semi-brittle.
Out of a carton! Gooey?
Oh no……
I did go and look to see if there’s anything floating around the web on the science behind royal icing, and one disturbing thing I discovered when I did this was that apparently some people add gelatin so that it doesn’t go hard. Which would seem to me to totally defy the point…
Anyway: As far as bread goes, I mention it just ’cause I know that the sciency things happening when you knead bread are pretty complex, and aren’t just a case of the bits being smashed together into submission!
I’d expect royal icing, given all the beating, to be a case of getting little tiny bubbles of air into it to lend it that crumbly, melty character (otherwise it would just be hard and glossy) and keeping it going until the egg starts to congeal to keep the bubbles in? (If this is the case, then things like ambient temperature, the kind of mixer you’re using and the quality of the egg will all have an effect on how long it takes…)
Tiny bubbles of air. You’re probably right. Ain’t they just more atoms as well then? No… don’t answer that!
My Mum used to put gelatin in the icing and it was great. Sort of soft and crunchy at the same time.
My Grandma’s royal icing was so hard, you needed a hammer and chisel to break into it. Somewhat put me off the stuff.
I have made it though and yes I do know that weird vibrating ache in the arm for about an hour after you’re done. Not sure it’s worth it quite frankly.
My mother was a polio victim and one arm really didn’t work but I remember watching her beating royal icing by hand and I still reckon she got there quicker than I can with an electric beater!
Step aside please, professional pastry chef coming through – thank you!
)
Hi Andy. Royal icing is technically a meringue, a very heavy one! The egg protein is there to hold the air that is incorporated through the beating process (as in a light meringue). It shouldn’t take that long to reach the right consistency so I think something is amiss. The most likely cause is that grease, oil, fat or a trace of yolk has contaminated the mixture. To avoid this wash the bowl in hot soapy water and rinse well. Allow it to dry without wiping it. Make sure your scales or measuring device are spotless (or weigh onto clean paper). You can wipe the bowl with a cut lemon if you want to be extra careful. Make sure only egg white goes in. Proportions are 5.5 times icing sugar to whites. That’s 5.5 ozs per medium egg white (approx). If it’s not stiff enough it’s much harder to get the air in. Add the sugar gradually to the whites until all incorporated then beat on high till you get ‘peaks’. That is that the spikes you get when you stick your finger in don’t flop over! You can stir in a teaspoon of glycerine at the end to make the icing softer if you like. Another tip. Add blue colour to make it look white (we used to use those ‘blue bags for washing!) otherwise it ends up looking rather yellowish. It should set off overnight BTW.
There you go see? Easy!
Mike – I am going to save this for next year – which will be the next time I do this! It’s the one thing about Christmas that I insist on – a good and properly iced cake – and it’s the only time of year I get one! We buy the cake these days but the icing has to come from hard labour!
I’ll let you know next year how it goes!
I can’t say I was a brilliant cake decorator (bit of a specialist job) but I turned out Christmas cakes by the ton. That was back in the days when absolutely everyone bought an iced dark fruit cake AND a Dundee cake – if they were flush, and a chocolate log and tons of mince pies and enough bread to survive the siege of Mafeking. I used to be knackered come Christmas day!
I’ll dig out an old photo of a cake decorated by the greatest ever royal icing specialist, Ronnie Rock, (brilliant name) and send it to you. He produced architectural masterpieces of unbelievable skill back in the fifties. I notice nowadays that they use sugar paste to decorate the cakes – they roll it out! Of course, I made my own wedding cakes the old fashioned way…all four of them
My first wedding cake was made by a woman who was renowned for her clumsiness, yet she could make a woven grass basket, in royal icing, that was as regular, accurate and precise as anything made by a craftsman or a machine, and fill it with botanically accurate flowers, with a hinged lid and a handle that was a perfect imitation of twisted raffia; all made in her council house kitchen. Her work was a joy to behold.
I have been awed myself by creations like this. Tremendous artistry.